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Unpopular opinion: with women taking a larger role in professional life, men are having to pick up the slack when it comes to child rearing. That leaves less ti

Unpopular opinion: with women taking a larger role in professional life, men are having to pick up the slack when it comes to child rearing. That leaves less time for men to invent, discover, create, etc. But women aren’t inventing, discovering or creating in proportion to their increased professional participation. Our society is worse off because of it. Look at the people who made major scientific discoveries, or built new industries, or penned the most well known symphonies. They were almost entirely young men who were unmarried, or married in a time when women were expected to take care of the child rearing. I was reading “How the Laser Happened” and the guy who invented it had four kids, but still had plenty of time to sit on park benches during evening walks by himself and ponder the physics of light. He went on many trips to visit other universities for research and worked tons of hours at Bell Labs. That was a normal way for men to work back then, even expected and viewed honorably. We are going to have to accept less great discoveries and new inventions if society starts expecting men to bear half the effort of child rearing. You can’t come up with the laser or the Theory if Relativity if you’ve got crying kids you’re on the hook to watch while their mother is at work. The alternative is to not even have kids, or to raise them poorly. And that’s not fair to them. Unfortunately, that seems to be what most people are settling on. Which does not bode well for the future of humanity, either. Any way you slice it, it’s a bleak future.

urthor 5y ago
The same can be said for all sorts of minorities. The lack of participation in science is totally driven by psychological insecurities around high achievement.
aidenn0 5y ago
Even when mothers aren't pursuing a professional life, things are different because expectations of dads (and husbands for that matter) have gone up [1]. I think this is a good thing as far as families go (at least when the expectations remain realistic), as the bar for dad's parenting is still lower than mom's. There's still more pressure on women to "do it all and look good while doing so" but men definitely are struggling with taking on responsibilities that their fathers could ignore. 1: it's actually a bit more nuanced than just higher expectations. You get more points just for not leaving than you used to, but once you are there, the expected role is a bit more involved. I read an article talking about how children's experiences with father's have diverged; either they aren't there at all, or they are far more involved then previous generations.
dgb23 5y ago
This reminds me of the women who invented, made and fought for great things _despite_ the stigma and prejudice surrounding them. A few famous examples in our field: Ada Lovelace: the first program Grace Hopper: the first compiler Margaret Hamilton: software engineering, fault tolerance We really should at least try to stop pushing women out of our field, so much potential might be lost by this nonsensical adversity that seems to be so prevalent.
- MisterMower 5y ago
  No one is pushing them out of any field. If anything, there are concerted efforts to get young girls and women into any field that has historically been male dominant.
dx034 5y ago
It's only bleak if you assume that men don't prefer taking care of children over spending time in science. Many men will prefer family life and are happy that it's now socially accepted to put their kids first. And at the same time it frees up a lot of time for women to enter the field and make discoveries.
tricolon 5y ago
> But women aren’t inventing, discovering or creating in proportion to their increased professional participation. Can you back up your claim?
- MisterMower 5y ago
  There are no doubt notable outliers, but go look at all the major composers of the last 300 years. How many women can you name? Same thing with Nobel Prizes. The vast majority are men. How many women built new industries or invented revolutionary machines or devices? It was almost entirely men. Perhaps that will change in 100 years. I’m open to the argument that limited opportunity prevented women from accomplishing those things in the past. But historically that hasn’t been the case.
  - Infinitesimus 5y ago
    The societal factors that affect which gender produces an invention globally are very complex. Using GPs example of raising children, sure we have more women in the workforce which is great. But we also have centuries of sexism deep in us that takes a while to root out. We have an imbalance of opportunity. Women today _still_ have a hard time rising capital for their companies. Etc. Etc. Like you said, we'll see where things go over time but I remain quite excited for the ideas new minds will bring to our species regardless of gender, race, etc.
nostalgiac 5y ago
> But women aren’t inventing, discovering or creating in proportion to their increased professional participation. Do you have evidence to suport this? (Geniunely curious) Why do you think that is the case? Just the fact that they are more likely to be part-time or not able to be fully committed into their field while also being a mother does not warrant them enough time/energy/x to achieve those breakthroughs?
- MisterMower 5y ago
  The evidence is all around you. Each year, more women obtain degrees than ever have before. Many are post graduate degrees. More women are participating in the workforce than ever have before. More programs exist to promote women into STEM fields than we've ever had in the past. Western culture worships the idea of the strong, independent, intelligent woman. Women are participating in professional life like they never have before. But go do a patent search. How many women do you see on a few random patents? Go do a search on LLCs in your state. Pull up a few. How many women do you see as the registered agent? Go do a search on LinkedIn on a few big tech companies. How many of the engineers, scientists, or programmers are women? You can argue that things are just still not equal, and won't be until 50% of all programmers, engineers, scientists, etc. are women. But the trendline is pretty obvious for anyone willing to look. As more women and fewer men participate, you get the results I described above. There's a lot of reasons for this. The first order effect is that men's productivity goes down as they devote more time to child rearing. That's just reality. I'm not even saying it's a bad one, but it's a reality nonetheless. That happens more frequently as men are expected to pick up the slack as women spend more time in the workforce. But the bigger second order effect is that, at a societal level, we have at least two generations where both parents worked full time. Instead of mom staying home to raise them, they were raised in day care centers or with parents who were always distracted by work, neither one of which was 100% devoted to child rearing. One parent devoted 100% to a child's development is much more impactful than two parents devoted 50% of the time. A society full of devoted, involved, active mothers increases productivity, discovery, and economic growth. You get children who grow up well adjusted, ready to face hardship in adulthood. Ready to build the future. And you get a larger quantity of such kids because parents aren't worried about the marginal cost of one more kid at the day care when both parents work. And those kids go onto have their own well adjusted kids, and you get new inventions, discoveries, etc. We are lying to young girls, telling them the best thing they can do is go to college and get a great paying white collar job. And then we scratch our heads as to why birth rates are plummeting, and why male participation in the work force keeps dropping, and why family formation continues to fall. We have propagandized these women into despising motherhood: the culture doesn't even call them mothers anymore, they're "birthing people." There's the first order effect of less male participation in ways that drive progress in science, industry, and the arts when you increase the participation of women in the workforce. But these second order effects are huge, and no one even realizes that they're happening under the hood. The Albert Einsteins or even Rosalind Franklins of tomorrow won't be nurtured, or even born, in a society that functions like this.

urthor 5y ago

The same can be said for all sorts of minorities. The lack of participation in science is totally driven by psychological insecurities around high achievement.

aidenn0 5y ago

Even when mothers aren't pursuing a professional life, things are different because expectations of dads (and husbands for that matter) have gone up [1]. I think this is a good thing as far as families go (at least when the expectations remain realistic), as the bar for dad's parenting is still lower than mom's. There's still more pressure on women to "do it all and look good while doing so" but men definitely are struggling with taking on responsibilities that their fathers could ignore. 1: it's actually a bit more nuanced than just higher expectations. You get more points just for not leaving than you used to, but once you are there, the expected role is a bit more involved. I read an article talking about how children's experiences with father's have diverged; either they aren't there at all, or they are far more involved then previous generations.

dgb23 5y ago

This reminds me of the women who invented, made and fought for great things _despite_ the stigma and prejudice surrounding them. A few famous examples in our field: Ada Lovelace: the first program Grace Hopper: the first compiler Margaret Hamilton: software engineering, fault tolerance We really should at least try to stop pushing women out of our field, so much potential might be lost by this nonsensical adversity that seems to be so prevalent.

MisterMower 5y ago
No one is pushing them out of any field. If anything, there are concerted efforts to get young girls and women into any field that has historically been male dominant.

dx034 5y ago

It's only bleak if you assume that men don't prefer taking care of children over spending time in science. Many men will prefer family life and are happy that it's now socially accepted to put their kids first. And at the same time it frees up a lot of time for women to enter the field and make discoveries.

tricolon 5y ago

> But women aren’t inventing, discovering or creating in proportion to their increased professional participation. Can you back up your claim?

MisterMower 5y ago
There are no doubt notable outliers, but go look at all the major composers of the last 300 years. How many women can you name? Same thing with Nobel Prizes. The vast majority are men. How many women built new industries or invented revolutionary machines or devices? It was almost entirely men. Perhaps that will change in 100 years. I’m open to the argument that limited opportunity prevented women from accomplishing those things in the past. But historically that hasn’t been the case.
- Infinitesimus 5y ago
  The societal factors that affect which gender produces an invention globally are very complex. Using GPs example of raising children, sure we have more women in the workforce which is great. But we also have centuries of sexism deep in us that takes a while to root out. We have an imbalance of opportunity. Women today _still_ have a hard time rising capital for their companies. Etc. Etc. Like you said, we'll see where things go over time but I remain quite excited for the ideas new minds will bring to our species regardless of gender, race, etc.

nostalgiac 5y ago

> But women aren’t inventing, discovering or creating in proportion to their increased professional participation. Do you have evidence to suport this? (Geniunely curious) Why do you think that is the case? Just the fact that they are more likely to be part-time or not able to be fully committed into their field while also being a mother does not warrant them enough time/energy/x to achieve those breakthroughs?

MisterMower 5y ago
The evidence is all around you. Each year, more women obtain degrees than ever have before. Many are post graduate degrees. More women are participating in the workforce than ever have before. More programs exist to promote women into STEM fields than we've ever had in the past. Western culture worships the idea of the strong, independent, intelligent woman. Women are participating in professional life like they never have before. But go do a patent search. How many women do you see on a few random patents? Go do a search on LLCs in your state. Pull up a few. How many women do you see as the registered agent? Go do a search on LinkedIn on a few big tech companies. How many of the engineers, scientists, or programmers are women? You can argue that things are just still not equal, and won't be until 50% of all programmers, engineers, scientists, etc. are women. But the trendline is pretty obvious for anyone willing to look. As more women and fewer men participate, you get the results I described above. There's a lot of reasons for this. The first order effect is that men's productivity goes down as they devote more time to child rearing. That's just reality. I'm not even saying it's a bad one, but it's a reality nonetheless. That happens more frequently as men are expected to pick up the slack as women spend more time in the workforce. But the bigger second order effect is that, at a societal level, we have at least two generations where both parents worked full time. Instead of mom staying home to raise them, they were raised in day care centers or with parents who were always distracted by work, neither one of which was 100% devoted to child rearing. One parent devoted 100% to a child's development is much more impactful than two parents devoted 50% of the time. A society full of devoted, involved, active mothers increases productivity, discovery, and economic growth. You get children who grow up well adjusted, ready to face hardship in adulthood. Ready to build the future. And you get a larger quantity of such kids because parents aren't worried about the marginal cost of one more kid at the day care when both parents work. And those kids go onto have their own well adjusted kids, and you get new inventions, discoveries, etc. We are lying to young girls, telling them the best thing they can do is go to college and get a great paying white collar job. And then we scratch our heads as to why birth rates are plummeting, and why male participation in the work force keeps dropping, and why family formation continues to fall. We have propagandized these women into despising motherhood: the culture doesn't even call them mothers anymore, they're "birthing people." There's the first order effect of less male participation in ways that drive progress in science, industry, and the arts when you increase the participation of women in the workforce. But these second order effects are huge, and no one even realizes that they're happening under the hood. The Albert Einsteins or even Rosalind Franklins of tomorrow won't be nurtured, or even born, in a society that functions like this.